


I'll Just Repeat the Past

by RetroactiveCon



Series: Hold Tight to What You Love [12]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Leonard Snart Needs a Hug, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: “You get after me about running myself ragged, but you’re doing the same thing.” Barry tilts his head. “You think you have to be the best father in the world to be half as good as everybody else, don’t you?”No. Maybe. If he doesn’t hold himself to the standard he’s been keeping, he doesn’t want to think of what could happen.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Leonard Snart
Series: Hold Tight to What You Love [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571482
Comments: 18
Kudos: 87





	I'll Just Repeat the Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SophiaCatherine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaCatherine/gifts).



> This is not a happy fic - Barry finally confronts Len about his fears around parenting, and it brings up a lot of Len's memories of Lewis's abuse (and his fears of abusing the twins the same way). SophiaCatherine, as promised, they work through some of Len's fears, but it's going to take a while for him to believe Barry unreservedly.

Leonard leaves the twins’ room later than usual. Two weeks after her kidnapping, Nora remains terrified of the dark. The only way she can sleep is with a nightlight on and Leonard’s voice to soothe her. Tonight, he read story after story until the twins drifted to sleep, curled around each other as though trying to protect each other from unseen forces. 

“Len.” Barry shuffles over. He’s huddled in a too-big navy pullover and clutching a mug of cocoa. Leonard doesn’t expect to have that mug pressed into his hand. “Come here to me.”

“Hey, Scarlet.” He lets Barry pull him close and burrows his face into the crook of his neck. Barry’s speedster warmth envelops him. Against his will, he finds the tension in his shoulders melting away. “Ready for bed?”

“No.” Barry guides him onto the sofa. “Um, I was hoping to talk to you about something. It can wait, though, you’re tired—you’ve been doing so much for the twins, and for me…”

“Hmm.” He’s almost too tired to raise the mug of cocoa to his lips. The last two weeks have been hellish, and he’s not sure he’s ready for whatever serious discussion Barry wants to have. (It’s blame, justifiably. He didn’t protect Nora the way he promised he would, and picking up the pieces in the aftermath doesn’t atone for what she had to endure. Barry is right to hold him accountable.) “Go ahead, Scarlet.” 

Barry’s jaw works for a minute as though he’s trying to find the words. Finally, he blurts, “You keep acting like you have to be the one to support all of us, and I can’t keep watching you do that.”

That’s not blame. “I’m not the one who was just traumatized—or re-traumatized, in your case.” 

“No, I—” Barry looks fleetingly frustrated. “I get _that._ Thawne just scarred Nora for life, the way he did to me, and you—you can’t even imagine what it felt like, thinking that I lost my child to the same man who killed my mother. I’m not saying we don’t need support. I’m saying that ever since the twins were born, you’ve acted like you have to be the one to take care of them all the time, and you don’t. I want to take a turn to be the one to soothe their nightmares or read them stories or let them cry on me, but you keep taking over before I can.”

That wasn’t Leonard’s intent. He responds to the twins as quickly as he can out of…damnit. Out of habit, now that he thinks about it. “It’s no chore, Scarlet. I like caring for them.”

“You get after me about running myself ragged, but you’re doing the same thing.” Barry tilts his head. “You think you have to be the best father in the world to be half as good as everybody else, don’t you?” 

No. Maybe. If he doesn’t hold himself to the standard he’s been keeping, he doesn’t want to think of what could happen. (Fists on tiny faces, tiny bodies. Raised voices and terrified tears. Slurs and insults constant enough to embed into malleable little psyches. It’s in his blood, and if he’s not vigilant, he’s going to damage them.) “‘Everybody else’ doesn’t have a criminal history enough to fill a bookshelf, Scarlet.” 

Barry actually pouts at him. “Don’t feed me the easy answer. You know how I feel about your criminal history—you had a code, even then, and you more than atoned for it when you helped save the multiverse. This isn’t about that, is it?” 

This is what he gets for marrying an empathetic little hero. Barry never lets him get away with the easy answer, even when it’s technically true. He has to prod and prod for Leonard’s real feelings, even when Leonard doesn’t have the words for them. “‘Everybody else’ didn’t get anything resembling human decency beaten out of them young, Scarlet. And one day my temper will get the better of me and I’ll beat the crap out of our kids, and the cycle continues. You want to hear me say I’m terrified of the day I lose control and turn into my old man? Then fine. All I’m hoping is that by giving them this while I can, they’ll trust me enough to listen when I tell them what a monster I am and how they have to run while they can.” 

It’s too much. Barry looked less hurt when Leonard used to shoot at him. “Len, _no.”_

“It’s in my blood, Scarlet. The same way it’s in yours to do anything to protect them.” Leonard doesn’t envy Barry his childhood, but at least Barry knows that he was loved. At least he gets to pass that legacy of love to the twins. 

“You’re not Lewis!” Barry latches onto him. Cocoa slops onto the sweater and Leonard’s nightshirt. He doesn’t seem to notice. “You’re the man who stood up to him on Lisa’s behalf so many times. Lisa told me. How many times did you bait him into beating you so he wouldn’t beat her?” 

Daily, or near-daily, for years. After Lisa’s mother left, there was nobody else to protect her. “So I can take a punch. Doesn’t mean I can’t deal them out.” 

“I don’t believe that.” Barry stares up at him, his eyes huge and shining with tears. Neither of them likes eye contact, so it’s a mark of the serious tone that they don’t look away. “You’re too gentle with them for me to believe that. You think I haven’t watched how you play with them? The other Rogues will roughhouse as much as the twins want, but you treat them like they’re glass.”

He has to. He’s watched Mick toss them in the air or Mark fling them into piles of pillows, and every time, all he can think is _What if it goes wrong?_ “They’re fragile.”

“And resilient. You’re allowed to make a mistake or several. As long as you take care to show them how much they’re loved, they’ll adapt.” Barry rubs his shoulder. “Joe wasn’t a perfect foster dad, but he loved me and I knew it. And you love them too much to lay a finger on them in anger. That much I know, and they do too.” 

“They’re fragile,” Leonard says again. He thinks of Nora’s sobbing when she wakes from nightmares and his heart shatters anew. She doesn’t seem resilient; she seems tiny and fragile and hurt because _he failed her_. Quietly, he murmurs, “I can’t protect them. I have to, and I can’t. I couldn’t protect them from Thawne—how am I supposed to protect them from the monster I know I’m going to become?” 

“You’re _not_ Lewis,” Barry repeats. He opens his mouth, apparently to press the point; then he reconsiders. “Would you say that Lisa’s a monster waiting to hurt the children?”

“No!” Lisa would never lay a hand on the twins in anger. Anyone who insinuates otherwise, for whatever narrow-minded reason, will encounter the business end of the cold gun. 

“She grew up in Lewis’s house, with his parenting. Isn’t she just as at risk?” 

Using logic isn’t fair. Leonard expects emotional appeals; those he can dismiss as Barry’s optimistic little do-gooder heart willfully ignoring the truth. He can’t dismiss logic as easily, and Barry knows it. “It’s different. She never took after our father. I did—I do.” 

Barry shakes his head. “She _chooses_ not to be like Lewis, the same way you do every day. I’m not going to pretend it will be easy to choose the right thing every time, because it’s not, but I think you’re strong enough to make that choice. And…” He shifts impossibly closer. “I think you have too much motivation to ever hurt the twins the way you were hurt.” 

“Abba?” 

They break apart. Leonard is suddenly, keenly aware of the mess of cocoa down his front. “Nora.” He sets the mug of cocoa aside and scoops her up. “Little Blue, why aren’t you asleep?”

“I nightmared again,” she whispers. “Abba, did you get hurt?” 

Oh no, she heard. Leonard can only imagine how long ago she came out of her room. “No, baby, no, I’m okay. Your Papa was just reminding me that I have to take good care of you, weren’t you, Papa?” 

Barry nods. Then, to Leonard’s dismay, he gets up and stage-whispers to Nora, “Your Abba doesn’t know he’s taken good care of you. He thinks he’s been a bad Abba.”

Nora clings more tightly. “No! I don’t care what the lightning man said, you’re _not_ a bad Abba! You saved me from the lightning man and then again from all my dreams.”

Her unquestioning faith brings tears to his eyes. Even when he was small and naïve, he would never have said something like that about Lewis. “Shh, baby, I’ve got you. Do I have to keep you safe from more dreams?” 

She burrows her face into his neck. “Yes please.” 

He casts Barry a final look as he carries Nora back to her room. This doesn’t fix anything—he’s still got too much of Lewis in him not to be vigilant for dangerous behavior—but at least he can acknowledge that, if he’s not a good father, he’s doing a better-than-average job of faking it.


End file.
